Departing from earlier joint field research in northern Ghana, the Principal Investigator and Field Assistant propose to inspect innovation as it exists or is lacking in expressive culture in Kasem-Speaking communities. This effort will be grounded in the designation of garu (go gamma o, sing.) or those persons who produce in specific areas artfully. It is this human designation which relates those cultural elements termed "the arts" in the West. Through the comparison of earlier documented material culture, now housed in Germany and in Upper Volta, with existing forms, and through information gathered in interviews with garu and their clientele, and participant observation, we intend to establish a profile of attributes assigned to garu, to locate those areas of go gamma o performance more/less likely to be open to innovation, and to establish criteria for the generalization of these patterns to other domains of behavior. In light of the brevity of the project--four months--three areas of go gamma o activity have been selected to receive specific attention. These are blacksmithing, architectural decoration, and musical composition. These were selected with the idea that each provides access to a specific dimension of the characterization of garu. Thus we propose to inquire into the forms and nature of a particular social phenomenon (change) in a behavioral domain (expressive culture) in a bounded ethnographic setting (among Kasem-Speakers).